Review of The Man with the Iron Fists (2012) by Eli T — 08 May 2013

The Man With The Iron Fists is a bad movie. The story is bad, (most of) the acting is bad, the choreography is bad, the effects are bad, the cinematography is bad, the editing is bad, and the script is bad.

I'm not entirely certain if this is supposed to be a B-movie or not, but either way that's not a compliment. This slapdash mess of kung-fu movie cliches quickly tires as we are treated to scene after scene of cartoonishly bloody violence, incomprehensible plot, and wildly varying editing.

Everything just doesn't work - maybe in another film Russell Crowe's performance as a smarmy opium addict would gel, but juxtaposed against RZA's inexplicably bleary-eyed character obsessed with pounding his fists together? It's laughable, but not enough to be taken as a light-hearted throwback to bad martial arts movies.

The film comes across as obnoxious and glaring, movie-theater fluff that is about as substantial as cotton candy in a hurricane. Even the action scenes go wrong, despite RZA's insisting that he didn't include a fight scene if it didn't further the story or introduce a new fighting technique.

The problem isn't his philosophy, it's how he executed it. No matter how many awesome choreography stunts are pulled together for one movie, it'll never actually make any positive effect if the director is so determined to absolutely pile on the absurd sound effects, inane dialogue and an inundation of whirlwind cuts and camera angles that positively obscure the action.

Nothing about The Man With The Iron Fists went right, but at least it was better than Kill Bill.